10 Reasons Why Natural Gas Is NOT The Solution To Our Energy Problems

We often hear statements suggesting that by ramping up shale gas production, the U.S. can raise total natural gas production and solve many of its energy problems, including adding quite a number of natural gas vehicles, and replacing a large share of coal fired electricity generation.

While there is the possibility that shale gas will allow U.S. natural gas supplies to increase for a few years (or even 10 or 15 years), natural gas is only about one-fourth of U.S. fossil fuel use, so it would be very difficult to ramp it up enough to meet all of these needs.

One issue is whether a rise in shale gas will mostly offset other reductions in natural gas supply. In Annual Energy Outlook 2011, EIA forecasts that shale gas production will increase from 23% of US natural gas production in 2010 to 46% of U.S. natural gas production by 2035, but that these increases will mostly offset decreases elsewhere.

Even with this huge increase in shale gas production, the EIA only sees US natural gas production increasing by an average of 0.8% per year between 2011 and 2035, and US natural gas consumption increasing by an average of 0.6% per year per year to 2035--not enough to make a very big dent in our overall energy needs.